During the second night of a race in Kansas, my stomach was in full revolt and I was questioning my life choices. My only goal was to make it from one aid station to the next, and they seemed to be getting farther apart. Just as I was getting ready to quit (not just the race but all running forever), I stumbled into an aid station and was greeted by two soft-spoken volunteers and their magical chair. These angels listened to my pity party and helped pull me out of my head. As we chatted, they told me about a race they put on in Arizona that is just for people age 50 and older called Grandmaster Ultras, and invited me to come run it. The idea felt absurd because the last thing I wanted to think about was more running. It felt a little like being offered a beautiful burrito in the middle of a stomach bug.
I finished the race in Kansas, but on the flight back home to Ohio I kept thinking about the volunteers at that aid station. I’m not one of those people who remembers every detail after a race, but that middle-of-the-night conversation stuck with me. All volunteers are amazing, but these two were so caring, and the way they spoke about Grandmaster Ultras felt like more than just poorly timed marketing. There was a real passion behind it, even if I didn’t fully understand it yet.
December was a miserable month in Ohio, with colder-than-normal temperatures and near historic snowfall. A few weeks later, I was throwing another pity party for myself. This time I was alone, in a chair in my living room. As I lamented the weather and doom-scrolled, the algorithm served me up something beautiful: pictures of desert trails filled with nothing but sunshine and Joshua trees. I needed to be there. That’s when I saw the name of the race: Grandmaster Ultras.
As ultras have grown in popularity, the runners seem to get younger, and the times have gotten faster. So, while there are more 100-mile races than ever, tight cutoff times still leave many older runners missing out. Daniel Wilson and Beiyi Zheng, the Grandmaster Ultras race directors and my overnight angels from Kansas, have seen that frustration firsthand in their own running, while hearing about experiences from their friends as they’ve gotten older.
That was the driving force behind Grandmaster Ultras. The events range from 50k to 100 miles, and all have very generous cutoff times including 48 hours for the 100k and 100-mile races. Dan and Beiyi truly want to see everyone succeed, whether this is their 100th ultra or their first. The care they gave me in the middle of the night, months earlier, was the same care they bring to every runner on the start line.
Grandmaster Ultras is something really special, and you can tell by the people the race attracts — from ultrarunning legends to everyday folks doing extraordinary things. This year, I had the privilege of sharing the start line with Catra Corbett, who has run all eight years of the race, Lisa Smith-Batchen, my first ultrarunning girl crush, and Mark Tanaka, who finished his 100th 100-miler. But just as memorable were the other runners I met, including a woman only 18 months out from heart surgery and a man who started running ultras in his 70s with eight 100-mile finishes under his belt already, who is also a lung cancer survivor.
The author finished third in the women’s 100-mile event. Photo Daniel Wilson
While the cutoff times are generous, don’t mistake this for an “easy” race. The course is harder than it looks on paper — one direction offers mountain views, and another includes an expansive desert landscape. And because most runners are out there long enough to witness it, the desert puts on an incredible light show at sunrise and sunset. The course runs through Joshua trees and past the “Thelma and Louise Overlook” (not actually from the movie), where a fence is covered in bras, undies and a giant teddy bear. And, while it’s beautiful, this is not the kind of course to zone out and just run. Some sections are very rocky, while others are full of loose sand. A few steep, technical climbs and descents, and long, slow grinding hills, and because it’s the desert, you get the full package of hot sun during the day and cold temps at night. Everyone definitely earns their finish.
Of course, none of us get to that finish line alone — we all rely on volunteers. The downside of generous cutoffs is finding volunteers who can cover all those hours. You can tell this race is special because the same volunteers come back year after year, and many of them stay out there for the full 48 hours. Outside of the start/finish, there are three main aid stations on the course, each with its own personality. But for all of their differences, they all seem to share the same goal: taking care of everyone like family. Sometimes that means cooking a hot meal, sharing a bad dad joke or delivering some good old tough love to get your butt back out there. I also experienced a little deja vu when I realized the aid station captain at the first stop on the loop was the race director from Kansas, wondering, for a moment, if I had fallen for some kind of ultrarunning pyramid scheme.
In a sport that keeps trending younger and faster, it felt pretty special to be out in the desert celebrating people who have seen a few more orbits around the sun. The race’s tagline is, “Old is Cool.” Grandmaster Ultras is a place to prove that given enough time, no matter our age, we can still do epic things. It’s impossible to spend time around this race and not come away inspired. My life’s goal is to continue doing ultras and other stupid things long after I start hearing, “Should you be doing that at your age?”
Full results here.